Thoughts On America’s Greatest Otaku: Episode #2

Diana made an adorable Chi, but what was Dre dressed as? For some reason I kept thinking of the Reapers from The World Ends With You, but that seems way too obscure...let me know in the comments what incredibly obvious thing I'm missing here.

Okay, before I do anything else, what is up with that Hulu commercial with the Adrian Brody lookalike with the huge nose singing in the bar while all the women cry? I have now seen that commercial three times in the process of watching and getting a few screens from this episode, and I still have no clue what’s going on there. Are we supposed to gather that the wine is what hideous-yet-inexplicably-sexy French people drink or something?

Anyway, I thought this episode was a massive improvement over the first one. Not only did the Otaku 6 show that they do in fact have personality (once their boss isn’t looking over their shoulder), but some of the people interviewed were just really interesting, even more so than last time. An Iraqi woman who was exposed to anime through Arabic dubs and now studies Japanese and publishes her own adorable doujinshi? A Japanese Aikido instructor with a sense of humor who also works as a chef at the restaurant next door, serving “country style” Japanese food of yore? Those are the kinds of characters I would perhaps make up for a story and then say “nah, too unrealistic,” so I think it’s awesome that these guys actually exist.

I-I don't understand this equation. This is one of those cases where "Please show all work" would have been helpful.

Meanwhile, since I wrote about the first episode, the manga-focused internet has seemingly exploded with hate for Tokyopop after some recent layoffs. I don’t know what to make of it; as far as I can tell, the people who are irritated with the company have some valid reasons for being that way, but there seems to be an element of people projecting any sort of dissatisfaction with Tokyopop that they have ever had since the days of Mixxzine in the ’90s onto AGO, and that doesn’t seem very fair to the people on the show, most of whom do not have much to do with Tokyopop.

I’ve seen a lot of comments to the effect of “How dare Tokyopop make this show that I have now decided to hate when they should be finishing my favorite series/not laying off people/re-translating that one title I think they screwed up ten years ago/ etc. etc.” and it’s like, guys, that’s like forty different issues that the contestants and Otaku 6 have nothing to do with. Once again, I’m not saying that the concerns about the way Tokyopop does business aren’t valid (and I’m not enough of a regular manga buyer to feel like I have an educated opinion there, honestly), but that’s an awful lot of baggage to saddle a little otaku-culture show with.

I think having a weekly theme does help the show overall, but maybe they could have picked a better expression? I don't really get what holding a toothpick has to do with it.

Pride and Prejudiced Mormons

I was kind of wondering what would happen if the cast ended up in a city where there wasn’t much otaku stuff to do, so it’s good we’ve gotten that out of the way with Salt Lake City. Personally I was kind of hoping that they would end up in North Dakota, just because I think the idea of traipsing around sparsely-populated North Dakota looking for cosplayers or something is hysterical, but that’s just me.

The cosplay challenge took away the biggest problem that I had with this show initially, which is that the Otaku 6 seemed pointless- the theme and challenge gave them a reason for being other than as automotons to ask questions in Stu Levy’s place, and Dominique certainly looked much better as Sailor Mars than Levy would have. However, I’m still confused about the structure of this show somewhat- so team D&D “won” the cosplay challenge, right? I know they’re not the AGO contestants, but it seems like they should have won SOMETHING for the challenge, even if it’s only a box of Pocky. I think the benefit of winning any of these things should have been described from the beginning.

The Post-Its give us some credit for being culturally aware this week and don't bother to tell us what Naruto is. The producers have realized that there is no one on earth lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Sasuke.

As far as the contestants go, as noted above I thought Shireen from Salt Lake City was awesome, and Di-Khiem from Denver certainly had the enthusiasm aspect down pat. I wasn’t too impressed with his song, but then he got the part about just wanting Ichigo and Rukia together and hating SasuXNaru, and then I decided he was a cool guy.

PREACH IT, my friend. You is okay.Also, I know it's only two character portraits on shoes, but that's pretty darn good- he even got Nia's eyes down perfectly.

As far as Todd is concerned, I’m not sure if it’s fair to be including professional voice actors among the contestants. It seems that everyone we’ve seen so far is mainly a hobbyist, so including professionals seems to be skewing the focus of the show a little bit. That said, some of the contestants do seem to do art professionally (Di-Khiem mentioned that he has clients for his shoes), and it would stand to reason that some of the biggest otaku around would pursue anime-related professions. So I don’t know- it’s less that including a professional strikes me as strictly wrong, as I wish I had a better idea what their selection criteria was in the first place.

A Hetalia Cosplay group? Well, I never got on the whole Hetalia train, but whatever floats your respective boats, kids. Now what would be just insane would be if they found ANOTHER Hetalia cosplay group in a different city, hahahahahah that would neverReally, Team S&S? You had to go stealing the Mangaloids idea and interview a Hetalia group? Go find some real Persona cosplayers or something (YEAH I WENT THERE.)

Best: Next to the whole story of Gaku Homma, who was just an all-around awesome guy who is not above slicing onions with a katana, Dre and Diana’s whole segment was the best. Watching them walk around the temple talking to otaku Mormon nuns and playing whacked out, Dada-ist mini-golf while in full cosplay was unique, but the two had sufficient chemistry that they were still watchable even when they were poking around behind dumpsters and basically doing nothing. Dre’s steadfast refusal to believe that they couldn’t find any otaku weirdness in SLC was amusing.

Even if you hate this show, consider watching this episode for this guy, because he might be the world's coolest Aikido instructor.

Worst: Sully’s cosplay. Really, if you’re going to be a Pocky Elf, you have to explain where the elf part comes from, or at least what inspired the costume. We sorely needed the origin of the Pocky Elf, and we never got it. Plus, it just looked like he was too lazy to dress up like a proper anime character. Stephan’s half-Persona, half-whatever cosplay wasn’t much better; yeah it’s hot, SO WHAT? Do you think Dominique enjoyed walking around town in that itty-bitty skirt? If you can’t take the heat, dress like Luffy.

Also going to call out the Funimation segment, not because it was bad but because it looked like they were dubbing Sora No Otoshimono, and that’s just a waste of absolutely everyone’s time.

Next time: The Otaku 6 visit more cities that are not in North Dakota (boo), and maybe I’ll get closer to nailing down whether or not the Otaku6 actually win anything for having to be weird in public repeatedly. Seriously, I am really curious what venues they’re going to pick when they get to my neck of the woods in NY.

2 thoughts on “Thoughts On America’s Greatest Otaku: Episode #2”

Thanks for the review! Someone emailed me the link. ^__^
Dre wasn’t dressed as anything specific– we pieced together costume pieces from stuff we already had on the bus. I was the only one who had brought my own costume (I also had the maid one, the steampunk one, and a character from the web comic Hanna is Not A Boy’s Name), so everyone else got their costumes from stuff that TOKYOPOP had brought on the bus from L.A. (although Stephen did bring his own schoolboy outfit!)

Hey Diana- If Dre was just piecing together a costume out of miscellaneous stuff, I guess he did pretty well because I was convinced that he was actually dressed as SOMEONE, I just couldn’t put my finger on who.

Knowing what I know now, I would bet money we will get to see your maid costume before the end of the series:).